


The “Elementary” Years (1915-1918)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 221B [231]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1910s, Destiel - Freeform, F/M, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Retirement, Revelations, Sussex, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 19:24:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11996379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The years of the 'Great War'. There is, inevitably, death, but there are also narrow escapes for two family members, one of whom subsequently discovers something that was being kept from him. And the other of whom side-steps Fate thanks to some foreign aid.





	1. Overseas Angel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [supersockie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/supersockie/gifts).



1915

I had not given much thought to our 'guardian angel', Mr. Jimmy Collins, ever since he had quitted England for the United States some years back. This spring in particular I had been distracted by a visit from my own brother, whose wife Jessica had become a volunteer nurse at a hospital for wounded soldiers, and who had told her husband that he needed a break from his work and his family, as well as giving him a chance to see his eldest son and his family. Sammy had duly been sent south, and we spent a very pleasant week together, although he insisted on lodging at “The Majestic Duck” rather than the cottage, and always looked disapprovingly when I met him in less than perfect order of a morning. But he was happy for me, and that made me even happier. 

The only cloud in those May blue skies was the knowledge of the terrible war that was still raging in the trenches not far to the south across the Channel. The people of the village made their small contribution to the war; I remember the old iron railings being removed to help 'the war effort', and although I doubted they would be much use to anyone, I supposed that it all helped boost morale. The only silver lining - a large and most blest one - was that when Sammy's son Johnnie had tried to sign up late last year, it had emerged that the boy had a degenerative eye condition. Nothing serious, but it precluded him from military service, for which I was truly thankful.

Sherlock received a telegram during my brother's stay, but unusually did not tell me what was in it. We accompanied Sammy back to his hotel on his last full day, and Sherlock surprised him with first-class sleeper tickets on the East Coast main line, saying that it was a belated birthday present for the moose. I was suspicious – Sammy had by then moved back to Edinburgh, and I knew that he had come down by the West Coast route - but I said nothing.

The next day, I found out the reason for the gift. There had been a terrible railway accident at a place called Quintinshill, just over the Border and not far from where we had solved the case of Old Baron Dowson some fifteen years ago. Over two hundred men dead, many of them soldiers on their way to the war. And it had involved the very train that Sammy would have been taking back North!

“Jimmy sent me a telegram from the United States”, Sherlock explained. “I did not want to say anything, because your brother is, for all his fine qualities, a little fatalistic. He might well have felt that he was changing history by not being on that train.”

I could see his point.

“It really is like having a guardian angel”, I said with a smile. “We are so lucky to have him!”


	2. Saving Lieutenant Warburton

1917

It was three years since the start of the Great War, the war which was supposed to have been all over by the first Christmas. Yet here we were over a thousand days and far too many dead and broken young bodies later, and it was pretty much a stalemate. Britannia continued to rule the waves, and Imperial Germany’s ham-fisted attempts to stop that had finally brought the United States into the war on our side. But more than balancing that out was the loss of our allies the Russians, whose constitutional sufferings had allowed that bastard Kaiser Bill to transfer more and more troops to his southern and western fronts. Stalemate, but something had to give soon, either our increasingly beleaguered trench lines or the tottering German economy.

I sniffed mournfully, and wrapped myself ever tighter in blankets which seemed to do precious little to keep out the cold. Sherlock brought me another cup of coffee, and placed it on the table next to me, then sat down and pulled me to him. I went willingly.

“I am sorry”, he whispered. “But at least we got to him in time.”

Two weeks ago, British forces had won a great victory at the Third Battle of Gaza, laying the way open to Jerusalem and the ailing Ottoman Empire's weak southern flank. But at what had proven to be nearly a terrible cost to me, and I had Sherlock to thank for avoiding a tragedy. My son, Lieutenant Benjamin Warburton, been court-martialed for desertion, and would have been shot as was common practice in those days had not a colleague of his, a Lieutenant Carton-Jones, had had the kindness to send a warning telegram to Ben's wife Valerie, and she had had the good sense to immediately contact me, although of course to her I was but a family friend. The full weight of the Holmes machine had been thrown into the fray, and Ben was now being shipped back, having been honourably discharged.

“It was partly my fault”, I muttered. Ben had wanted to see the Holy Land, and I had used my (Sherlock's) influence to get him into a regiment that had been assigned there. And it had so nearly got him killed. 

“You only did as he asked”, Sherlock reassured me. “And besides, if he had gone to the Western Front….”

He trailed off, but I knew that he was thinking not only of the horrific casualty rates in those terrible killing fields (mathematically I knew that Ben would have been more likely to have been killed there even before he had journeyed out to Egypt earlier in the year), but that our nephew Henry – Heinrich as he now called himself – had left England for Germany at the start of the war, and was now enrolled in the Kaiser's army. The thought of my nephew, even a disinherited one, killing my son was unbearable. Sherlock pulled me even closer, and whispered to me that it was all right to cry. 

So for once, I let myself do just that.

+~+~+

Ben's marriage to Valerie, whom I had come to think very highly of, had led to an estrangement with his 'father', Major Matthew Warburton, now squire at Stoke Fratrum whence we had once visited him and his wife – my brief, one-time lover, Lisa. She had died some two years ago, which I think had only served to exacerbate the family split, and she had never told him the truth about his origins, always putting off my concerns and not telling me of her long final illness, which had followed on immediately from that of her father-in-law. One of her widower's failings was an ardent hatred of Catholics, and his prospective daughter-in-law's faith had been too much for him, even though Ben had made it clear that any children they had would be raised to choose their own religion when they were old enough. With two other sons and a daughter, the new squire had formally disinherited Ben, not knowing of course that the boy was my blood, not his. Even when Valerie gave birth to twin boys, Benjamin Junior and Levi, there was no reconciliation, and I had privately thought that one of the reasons that Ben had enlisted had been in an attempt to regain his father's approval. Two more children had followed before Ben had joined up, a daughter Elizabeth and a son Stephen.

What had made me even angrier, however, was the discovery that Major Warburton had, like us, been informed by the army of his son's actions and had been offered the chance to have him returned home, only for the bastard to insist that the full punishment be carried out. Had it not been for the faithful Lieutenant Carton-Jones (who survived the war but was severely traumatized by his experience; Sherlock and I made sure to take care of both him and his family in Monmouthshire), we would not have known until it had been too late. I hated the major for that.

The whole affair was resolved before the end of the year, and Sherlock accompanied me down to Plymouth to greet my son off the ship. He had clearly been shattered by the stress of warfare, and I felt bitterly angry towards those who treated soldiers who broke under the duress of battle as cowards. Unluckily, poor Valerie had sprained her ankle and could not come with us, but we accompanied Ben back to Sussex. My son was still dazed by recent events, but he looked round in surprise when we alighted at our nearest station and drove down the road towards Casdene, stopping at one of the terraced houses Sherlock had had built by the ford a few years back.

“I can't stay with you, Uncle John, Uncle Sherlock”, he protested.

“You are not”, I told him. “Valerie has sold the house in Alresford – it was too close to your father's place anyway – and we found her this place. Plus the garage can use an extra mechanic, with all the vehicles on the roads these days.”

He looked at us tearfully, and with great timeliness Sherlock stepped in to prevent a mushy moment.

“Your wife and children are waiting for you”, he reminded Ben. “And remember, you can call on us at any time. Though it is probably better if you let us know if you are coming.”

My son flushed bright red, muttered his thanks and almost ran into the house. Sherlock chuckled and clicked the reins, driving me home for a prolonged session of what some might, in an uncharitable moment, have described as cuddling.

Sherlock just looked at me. I scowled. 

All right, all right! It was cuddling!


	3. Truth And Consequences

1918

Ben's arrival in the valley had occurred the previous December, and what with that and Christmas I was all over the place at the end of 1917. Hence I was in no fit state to receive the bad news that arrived on New Year’s Day. On the little regarded southern front, the Central Powers had recently won a great victory at Caporetto, pushing back our Italians allies some distance. Of course any information from so far away, let alone it being a war zone, was bound to take time to reach us, but then bad news always travels fast.

“Henry – Heinrich - is dead”, Sherlock said quietly as we sat on the bench outside the cottage. 

I looked down into the little dean and the village below us, and sighed. Valerie had called earlier that day; Ben was having nightmares most nights, but otherwise was doing better than I had expected, given some of the horror stories I read about returning soldiers elsewhere. I did not feel it, but I knew that we had been fortunate.

“What about his son?” I asked. My lost nephew's wife had given him one son, called Wilhelm after the German emperor and born last year. I did not know if she was pregnant with a second; her husband had cut off all communication with his English relatives after he had gone abroad.

“Your niece’s brother Arnulf has taken him in”, Sherlock said. “She had no other family.”

I was sorry for the poor baby, whose father had made such poor decisions in his life, but in a sense I felt something akin to relief. The thought of a blood relative of mine killing my fellow countrymen – it was horrible!

“John?”

“Uh huh?”

“I love you.”

I looked at him in surprise. Sixty-three now, Sherlock had grown into what one newspaper rather daringly called recently ‘a silver fox’, the grey and the dark in perfect balance in his always untidy hair, making him look positively gorgeous. Whatever the Fates threw at the Watson and Holmes clans, at least I still had him.

“Take me inside”, I muttered, shivering slightly.

“What, in this weather?” he teased. I swatted at him.

“Inside the cottage, you sex maniac!” I groused. Honestly, he was..... perfect!

And he did. Right by our roaring fire, which soon was not the only thing roaring!

+~+~+

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month had passed. The 'Great War' was finally over. I sighed as I half-dozed with an angel in my arms, and thought of all those young lives wasted just because the vile Kaiser Bill, now fled into exile in the Netherlands, had wanted even more land for Germany. Never again.

At least Ben was getting better; he had not had a nightmare for nearly a whole month now according to Valerie. When I thought how many young men had returned in such terrible condition, mentally and physically – and worse, how so many had not returned at all – I shuddered.

It was odd that I was thinking about Ben, because at that moment I heard his voice from outside. Leaving my resident blue-eyed genius in bed, I pulled on a dressing-gown and went to the window. Sure enough, it was my son. He looked strangely uncertain, and I immediately worried.

“Can you let me in?” he called up.

I nodded and went so to do, knowing from the unhappy growl that someone else was up, and worse, was not yet caffeinated. I had the good sense to take him his dressing-gown; Ben did not need any extra trauma just now. 

Going downstairs I let my son in, and could see at once that something was indeed wrong. He sat down on the settee, whilst Sherlock slouched into the kitchen and headed for the new coffee-machine that he had brought recently. I did not like the thick brew that it produced, but he adored it.

Ben coughed, and looked even more nervous.

“What is wrong?” I asked. 

He looked me fully in the face, and I just knew what he was about to say.

“Why did you not tell me?” he asked quietly.

“Tell you what?” I deflected.

“That you were my real father.”

Oh.

Fortunately, as so often, Sherlock came to my rescue (he must have already downed three cups by the look of him).

“I had to unexpectedly quit England between 'Eighty-Three and 'Eighty-Six, before our relationship had progressed”, he said, sitting down. “You father, as he was within his rights to do, naturally saw other people during that time. Specifically, your mother.”

“And she did not tell you?” Ben said, a little too loudly. I winced.

“We did not know until she asked for our help on a case at the start of 'Eighty-Nine”, Sherlock said. “She had married Mr. Matthew Warburton very soon after the relationship, and when John saw the four-year-old you, he knew immediately. The anonymous relative who put money into that lump sum you received on your twenty-first birthday was of course him.”

“And you never said?” Ben asked incredulously.

“You had to live your life”, I said, finding my voice at last. “You had a set of parents, and I felt that by intruding, I would only have upset matters. How did you find out, may I ask?”

“One of his old servants who had used to wait on my mother retired”, Ben said. “She knew. She felt that I had the right to be told, and wrote to me.”

“I am sorry that I did not tell you”, I said. “Your mother promised me that she would tell you the truth when you reached twenty-one, but first there was her father-in-law's final illness, and then her own which followed on from it. She did not tell me of the latter; I only knew when I read of her death in the paper.”

Ben's face darkened.

“My fa... Matthew knew, did he not?” he said darkly. “That was why he did nothing to save me from the firing-squad.”

“We cannot know that”, Sherlock said fairly, “but it is quite likely.”

“Then I wish to have nothing more to do with the Warburtons”, Ben said firmly. “As far as I am concerned, I am a Watson, through and through.”

I sniffed. But it was a manly sniff. And someone could stop looking at me like that!

“Get some clothes on, _Father_ ”, Ben sighed, “and we can go for a walk. Before you both start traumatizing me - again!”

+~+~+

Next, we are into the Roaring Twenties, where life (and sex) goes on.


End file.
